Google Pixel 2 Update Improves Battery Life Estimates

Google has updated its Pixel software to improve battery life estimates

Google’s taken to its Pixel Phone forum to reveal a new update for the Pixel series – the post doesn’t actually specify whether it’s for the Pixel 2 series or the first-gen Pixels, implying it may well be for all Pixel handsets.

The update, which should be quietly rolling out to your Pixel phone now, is intended to make battery life estimates on the handset more accurate, and as a result much more useful.

A Google product manager said, “Previously, your phone would estimate your battery loss with simple assumptions. If you’ve used about 10% per hour over the past few hours, we would guess you will keep using 10% per hour.”

“As you might expect, this wasn’t always very accurate,” she added.

“To fix this, we built an on-device model that evaluates how you use your phone’s battery over time. Your phone looks at your battery usage on similar days and times, and uses that to predict your battery life in a personalized way.”

Essentially, Google has updated the algorithms to be much more intelligent in your phone-use analysis and how this can be used to determine estimated battery drain.

With an updated Pixel phone, you can head to the Settings menu and then to the Battery section to receive a personalised battery estimate; it’ll give you a percentage for the battery as usual, but also an estimated time remaining before that’s depleted. If you tap the battery icon you also get a graph showing how this estimate will play out.